F11 Alpha Release Notes one-sheet

[Karsten Wade]

On Wed, Feb 04, 2009 at 04:17:10PM -0800, Dale Bewley wrote:

> Is the goal for the Alpha relnotes[1] to be as close to complete as
> possible? A snapshot up to this point? If so, why isn't it based off the
> page[2] which transcludes all the current beats? There are beats updated
> for F11 which aren't included on "one-sheet". 

Here's the quick history.

We used to do a full conversion from wiki to XML for Alpha and Beta.
We included time for translation.  There were almost no positive
effects we could detect, but the list of negatives was big:

* Lots of churn after Alpha and Beta; l10n wasted a lot of time
  translating content that got thrown away a week later.

* More effort to keep the churning wiki content in sync with the XML
  once converted.  Heartache and grief.

* Increased complexity lead to more mistakes, missed deadlines, and
  distraught people.

* Putting more humans in the path from "this needs to be in the
  release notes for the Alpha" and "people can now read this important
  release note."  Content for the release notes for the Alpha and Beta
  is often arriving at the last minute.

There are lots of ways those problems could be solved and still do a
conversion from wiki to XML.  First, don't bother having them
translated.  Second, have automagic between the wiki and XML.  Third,
have a tightly woven schedule that everyone understands.  Fourth, use
automagic + CMS to make it possible for content to be pushed at the
last minute.

Unfortunately, we don't have any of those save the first.  I recommend
we keep the one-sheet as-is for Alpha and Beta until Fedora 12; we
need tools, processes, and experience in place to make it not come to
bloodshed and tears. :)

> I do realize there are cutoffs and deadlines for moving content around.
> I just had the impression last time that content moved through the
> pipeline quickly/automagically after being updated in a beat. I could be
> deluded though (I know Karsten worked his butt off).

This was only for the Preview Release and forward; that is when we did
the conversion and manually kept content in sync.

> If only the text on this one-sheet page[1] is going to go into creating
> the static end result[3], it seems it might be helpful to users if we at
> least link from this one-sheet page to the more complete (albeit
> inconsistent at this early stage) Beats in progress jumbo page[2].

It could be interesting to link to the Beats at this point; they are
much cleaner than usual for this part of the release cycle.

> /me still stubbornly thinks of the wiki content as the end result rather
> than a way point. I realize that isn't practical for L10N though.

It's more than that, but it's all problems that can be solved by computers.

Here is some capture of the process as how it has been to this point:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/ReleaseNotes/Process#The_Process

- Karsten
-- 
Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Community Gardener
http://quaid.fedorapeople.org
AD0E0C41
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